Twitter hires former top FCC aide

The San Francisco-based social networking company announced Monday — via tweet, of course — that telecom policy veteran Colin Crowell will become Twitter’s head of global public policy.

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Crowell was a long-time senior aide to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), where he handled the biggest technology and telecom issues in front of Congress over the past two decades. In 2009, he became senior adviser to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, helping to shape some of the commission’s early broadband policies and Open Internet order.

Last year, he left the agency to start his own consulting business. His clients have included Sprint and Google.

Crowell will be the second official D.C. hire for Twitter. Last November, the startup hired Adam Sharp as its first government liaison. Sharp was previously executive producer of digital services at C-SPAN, and since then, he’s been helping policymakers and politicians figure out how to integrate Twitter into their daily activities.

Crowell will start in mid-September. Twitter did not release additional details about Crowell’s duties, or whether he’ll be a registered lobbyist. But he’ll likely be involved in directly engaging with lawmakers on Capitol Hill and at agencies including the FCC and FTC.

As Twitter grows in popularity and influence, policymakers in Washington are watching. Lawmakers are increasing their scrutiny of privacy practices by social media sites, and the company will likely need to pay attention to discussions about new cybersecurity proposals, broadband expansion projects and mobile network policies.

Twitter has become a central part of politicians’ social media strategy.

President Barack Obama’s campaign used it to engage with voters in 2008, it was even more widely used by both parties in the 2010 congressional elections, and it will likely play an even larger role in the upcoming presidential campaigns.

Just about every member of Congress, government agency and policymaking body uses Twitter to communicate regularly with constituents.

The White House’s first Twitter Town Hall in July brought in nearly 170,000 tweets in the span of a few hours.

It has also become a go-to place to share breaking news, such as last week’s East Coast earthquake. And it’s been used as a tool for activism during times of unrest around the world, such as the protests in Egypt earlier this year.

The site recently passed the 1 million mark for registered Twitter applications, and it’s experimenting with “promoted tweets” to try to target ads to its more than 200 million registered users, who send more than 200 million tweets per day.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 12:06 p.m. on August 29, 2011.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the number of Twitter’s registered users.